EXCLUSIVE: Peter Gallagher (The O.C.) is set to join Andie MacDowell in The Right Side, the independently produced comedy series from Max Talisman and Lynne Kamm, currently gearing up for production in New York.
The project puts Gallagher and MacDowell on screen together for the first time in many years. They first starred together in Steven Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies & Videotape nearly four decades ago, before going on to share the screen in the Robert Altman films The Player and Short Cuts.
As we reported in January, The Right Side is a story about politics as content, family as collateral damage, and the impossible task of loving people you fundamentally disagree with. Dyllón Burnside and Talisman are also set to star.
The story begins with a live, on-air announcement that turns a terminal illness into a national spectacle. America’s most beloved conservative TV couple’s carefully curated public persona collides with their very real family when their liberal, podcast-famous kids return home for a network tribute special. Notably, the same kids host a show dedicated to tearing down everything their parents stand for.
MacDowell plays Ruthie, a right-wing news celebrity and co-host of a morning show whose public-facing marriage — and private life as a mother of twins — is tested as the family is forced into the spotlight. Gallagher plays Ruthie’s husband and longtime television counterpart, the other half of a marriage that has become inseparable from the family brand itself. Their relationship sits at the center of the series as the family is pulled into public view in ways it can no longer control.
Talisman and Kamm are co-showrunners, executive producers, and writers of The Right Side, which will shoot in New York. Buzz Koenig and Darren Goldberg will also exec produce for Atlantic Pictures, alongside Katharina Eggmann, who is handling casting, Trent Anderson, and Jess Sonnenfeld Jolles.
Gallagher is a veteran actor who has been seen in classic films like American Beauty and While You Were Sleeping and additionally been seen starring in series like The O.C. and Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist. Most recently seen in The Beauty, FX’s body horror series from Ryan Murphy and Matthew Hodgson, he is repped by Gersh.